If you remember watching Kenny Anderson playing the game, you remember it was fun.

Best remembered as a Georgia Tech star then a New Jersey Net (although he played for a number of other teams), he wasn’t a great shooter, he gambled a little too much on defense, but he was a playground guy who figured out how to make that style and flair fit in the NBA well enough that he was an All-Star with a 14-year NBA career.

Anderson said he was molested twice as a child. Once by somebody in the youth basketball community (he was very clear it was not one of his AAU or high school coaches).

“I admitted I got molested twice,” Anderson said…

“I don’t think it killed me, like it killed some other kids that’s been molested. You can really take a lot out of a kid for the rest of their lives. I think without the fame, without the basketball celebrity notoriety it might have been more difficult for me….

“The bottom line, if I could help somebody and they see Kenny Anderson got molested and he’s talking about it, now people are going to come out and maybe be able to tell their story. I wasn’t going to do it, but the trigger went off for me and it just had to be done.”

He didn’t tell his mother or anyone for years, his wife only found out three or four years ago.

But with his new autobiography coming out (likely next March) he is starting to talk about it.

In the past year NBA player Keyon Dooling also admitted he had been molested as a youth.

The only way to really help future children from this predatory situation is to shine a light on it — people like Anderson coming out and talking about it. That may help others come forward and talk about it, to shine a light on the perpetrators whoever they are and bring them out in the daylight. Bring them to justice.

And if Anderson’s story helps one person with that, helps them know it’s not their fault and they can talk about this, then it was worth it.

But Dooling talked basketball, too, and let’s just say he’s higher on Rajon Rondo than you are. Really, he’s higher on Rondo than anyone not named Rondo.

No doubt Rondo is an elite point guard. But Dooling is Rondo’s friend, he bonded with the young Celtics point guard, and as I think that may cloud his judgment. Actually, I don’t think that, I know it. Here is what Dooling told Jessica Camerato of CSNNE.com.

“He’s come from nothing, he’s come from nothing. He’s the second-best player in the league. He didn’t make the USA Team, sometimes he’s a replacement for the All-Star Game. He’s the epitome of an unselfish player. He rebounds the basketball, he affects the game in five statistical categories. He shoots a higher percentage than all the point guards and they always talk about how he can’t shoot.”

Dooling continued, “Not only do I think he’s the second-best player in the NBA behind Kevin Durant, but I think he is an amazing leader. I think he doesn’t get a fair shake in the media and I wish they knew my friend the way I did.”

Second best player in the league behind Durant? I feel like we’re forgetting someone in that conversation…

Just for the record, Rondo shot 44.8 percent overall, 23.8 percent from three, and if you make it a points-per-shots and included free throws and threes in the mix (called true shooting percentage) it is a below average 48.3 percent. So 44.8/23.8/48.3 for Rondo, compared to Chris Paul’s 47.7/37.1/58.1 or Steve Nash’s 53.2/39/62.5. I have seen Rondo knock down key jumpers, but the reason people say he doesn’t have a good jump shot is he has only shown us an inconsistent jump shot.

I don’t like these kinds of conversations because it demeans Rondo, whose playmaking skills are elite, who is one of the better point guards in the game and is the guy who may be the best player on the Celtics roster right now. He brings it at both ends and is fun to watch with the ball. But Rondo is not the second best player in the NBA, obviously. I’m not sure where he would rank numerically because I find that entire kind of exercise silly. I’m a guy who likes to put players on tiers, and Rondo is on one way up the mountain, but a step back from CP3 and Deron Williams right now just as pure point guards, and if Derrick Rose is healthy he may not be a pure point but he’s ahead of Rondo, too.

By the way, Dooling love Kevin Garnett, too, and makes a case for this friend.

“He’s probably the best player of this time, of this generation. If you look at the way all the bigs play, they don’t mimic Tim Duncan. They mimic Kevin Garnett. If Kevin was coached by Doc a long time ago and if Kevin played with five other All-Stars and all these great players in this great system, I’m sure he would have the same amount — see, our game is a little bit weird. The best players don’t always win, and Kevin Garnett at the end of the day is probably the . . . if you don’t want to call him the best of this generation, you can definitely call him the most influential just because Kobe [Bryant] was like Mike (Michael Jordan). Derrick Rose and all these guys, it was other people who came before them like that. And when Kevin came into the league, he was different from Bob McAdoo, he was different from all those players who fit that mold.

Retiring from the NBA is an emotional thing, especially for the guys who get to do it on their own terms. It was that way for Keyon Dooling, who after a dozen NBA seasons had signed on to play one more for the Celtics, but as he prepared for the season he realized he didn’t want to do it anymore.

But making that emotional choice led to a flood of other emotions, ones that washed away years of barriers he had put up in his mind to protect him from some of the horrors of his childhood. It led to him melting down and seeking therapy.

It led to the realization he had been abused as a youth. In just about every way.

Years of repressed emotions came rushing back during this realization. Memories that Dooling had tried to bury were flooding out.

“I actually had such a meltdown that I had to get professional help and I ended up in the hospital,” said Dooling.

“It just all came to a head. To be honest with you, I blocked a lot of things out of my life. I’m a man who’s been abused, sexually, emotionally, mentally. I’ve been abused in my life, and there’s so many guys around the NBA who have been abused and I know it because I’ve been their therapist. I didn’t even have the courage because I blocked it out so much that I couldn’t even share that . . .

“He had been abused by both strangers and those he knew as a child. He refuses to harbor hate for those who have hurt him. Instead, he wants to share his story as a way to help others in similar situations cope. .

“I just couldn’t embrace it at that time . . . I just wish I had the courage to talk about my abuses, and I’m not putting anybody out there because that’s neither here nor there. I was abused by some random people and some familiar people and it happened not frequently, but it happened. One time is too many. I just wish I had the courage because so many of our guys have been abused.”

Powerful.

As a father, few things boil my blood like the idea of child abuse in any form. It took a lot of strength for Dooling to repress those memories. It took a much stronger man now to talk about them. The culture of sports, of locker rooms, is not to discuss this kind of thing, but that is also part of what allows it to continue. Dooling has taken a big step for him and hopefully it opens up the hearts and minds of other players.

You should read the entire post (we will have more on it as well). Dooling talks about his love for Rajon Rondo, for Kevin Garnett, for the Celtics organization. He opens up as few players ever really do to the media.

So Keyon Dooling retired last week, and it seemed weird and sudden. Then, almost immediately, reports surfaced that Dooling was going to join the Miami Heat.

Now, Dooling has issued a denial of those reports to Fox Sports Florida, (hopefully) ending one of the most irrelevant sagas of the late offseason:

So much for Keyon Dooling wanting to join the Miami Heat.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Saturday that, word was, the point guard — waived by Boston on Friday with the belief he would retire — had interest in the Heat. But the native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., denied that.

“No truth!” Dooling wrote in an email to FOX Sports Florida. “I will never play NBA ball again.”

So Keyon Dooling will not be bringing his lack of playmaking and erratic three-point shot to the Heat. Maybe. Look, we’ve seen this before. Guy says “No way, I’m done!” and then later is like “Oh, wait, I love money so, so, so, so, so much.”

Happens every year. And with the prospect of being able to sit out training camp and contend for a title on the table, don’t rule anything out just because Dooling’s willing to walk away right now.

As the Boston Celtics were getting around to finalizing their roster, Keyon Dooling — who they re-signed this summer but to a one-year, non-guaranteed deal — was not going to be a part of it. Thursday they waived him.

“Keyon has decided that he has given the NBA 12 good years and that it’s time to pursue other interests and spend more time with his family,” said Dooling’s representative Kenge Stevenson in a released statement. “He will never forget his time in Boston with the Celtics.”

“It’s a serious question because I want to identify what is driving you, what is motivating you?” he told CSNNE.com. “It is your family? Is it the money? Is it the glitz? Is it the glamour? Identify those so you can become better.

“So many different things [drive me], but the fear of failure is something that really motivates me. I do not want to fail. I do not want to lose. I have this thing, I can’t go back. I can’t go back. I’ve come too far. My family can’t go back to where we were. And that’s what’s driving me, to have my family landscape changed for generations.”

Dooling was the No. 10 overall pick out of Missouri by the Orlando Magic, but they instantly traded him to the Clippers where he started his career. He was a career 34.9 percent shooter from three who usually came off the bench wherever he played. Last season he shot 39 percent from three for the Celtics in the playoffs (he was their most consistant threat from deep), he was a solid veteran for the Nets before that. But those teams have gone another direction.

He never was a star but he was a solid role player around the league for his 12 years.